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Recent developments in Japan have worried outside
observers, in particular since the visit by the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to the Yasukuni shrine late
last December, the first Japanese prime minister to do so in seven years. The
visit was followed with predictable vilification by the governments of China
and South Korea, but the Japanese population was stunned by the swift
condemnation of other important international partners, including the United
States, the European Union and Russia.

The
Yasukuni issue is an emotive one in Japan, one which does not lend itself to
simplistic right and left divisions (for example Japanese big business, mindful
of the need to maintain good relations with its international trading partners,
has been largely critical of Abe’s visit.)
Nevertheless, Yasukuni is really a sideshow, almost a distraction from the
truly alarming moves that the current government has been making towards
militarism, including the government’s stated goal to scrap
the pacifist Article 9 of the constitution.

Japan: the next merchant of death

The article states that “the
Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the
threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes”. Though Japan maintains a military
euphemistically known as the Self-Defence Force, the pacifist intentions of the
article are clear, and it has acted as an overarching framework (and
constraint) for all Japanese diplomacy since the end of World War II. It has
also been a constant imposition for the conservative politicians of the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has crusaded for the revision of this
article since the party’s forming in 1955.

The lion’s
share of attention, both domestically and abroad, to the constitutional debate
in Japan has focused on the efforts of successive governments to alter this
article to allow the establishment of a ‘proper’ military and the exercise of
collective self-defence, currently forbidden under the official interpretation
of the Constitution. The government also created controversy when it announced
in late 2013 that it would ease its strict restrictions on weapons exports, opening the door to joint weapons
development and a potential role for Japan as one of the next leading global
merchants of death (unlike Abe’s
visit to Yasukuni, Japanese big business is very excited about this move, and
indeed has been pushing for it for years).

In late February, it came to light that, as part of the
easing of its restrictions, the government intends to allow the export of
weapons to countries that are currently party to a conflict, which
has been expressly forbidden under government policy up till now to ensure that
Japan does not fuel conflict as major weapons exporting countries did (and do).
Some observers have expressed concern that this change in policy is at least
partially driven by a desire to join the United States in arming Israel – meaning Japanese weapons could aid the oppression and occupation of the
Palestinian people and military operations in Gaza, Iran or Lebanon.

The agenda against human rights

More alarming than these developments are the current
government’s
plans to revise other sections of the constitution, which go far beyond Article
9 (and the scant media attention given to these plans within mainstream media
in Japan). A draft revised constitution published by the LDP has grave human
rights implications, and threatens a return to the arbitrary ‘security’ powers of the military government in
the 1930s and 40s, when suspected political opponents were detained and
tortured at will.

The draft revised constitution published in April 2012 is straight
out of a dictator’s
handbook. It includes sweeping restrictions on fundamental rights, stating that
the rights of the people to “life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
could
be legitimately restrained by “public
interest and public order”.
The right to freedom of expression and assembly are also subjected to this new “public interest” restriction – a particularly worrying development
given the new Designated Secrets Act,
which was rammed through parliament in December above howls of national and
international protest.

This act defines broad categories of information that can
be designated secret at the whim of the government, together with extremely
high penalties for leaking secrets (eg ten years imprisonment). In response
to the outcry, the prime minister announced at the eleventh hour the creation
of a panel of independent experts that would advise on criteria for
designation. The panel met for the first time in January, and the minutes are – you guessed it – secret.

The current constitution already includes a restriction on
rights in the name of public welfare, but this has been widely interpreted to mean that the executive has to
show that any restriction is necessary (and proportionate) for the protection
of other rights. Unhappy with this primacy of human rights protection, the LDP
lamely argues in the FAQ issued with the draft that “public interest” is somehow a more concrete concept
transcending trivial questions of individual rights.

Clearly, the LDP believes that the executive should be
entrusted with defining the public interest in each specific case, a sure blank
cheque for arbitrary actions. In his personal blog, Shigeru Ishiba, the chief
whip of the LDP, branded
peaceful protesters against the Designated Secrets Act as “terrorists” – an ominous sign as to
how the government plans to interpret the public interest criterion.

The current constitution prohibits torture or cruel
punishments “under
any circumstances”.
In the LDP’s
draft, the phrase “under
any circumstances” is
gone, suggesting that the government believes, in flagrant violation of
international law, that torture could be justified under some circumstances.
This is particularly grave given that rampant and systemic ill treatment in
detention facilities, in particular during pre-trial detention, is one of the
longest standing human rights abuses in Japan. This problem has been documented
extensively by international and Japanese NGOs
and the Japanese Bar Association and was reiterated recently by the
UN Committee against Torture, which listed extensive human rights problems
related to the current system of pretrial detention. Abe dismissed these
comments, stating that they were not legally binding. None of this bodes well for the
future of human rights in Japan.

Education reform –
all
hail the flag

The government’s
ability to push forward these revisions is an open question, since changes to
the constitution require a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament and
majority support in a referendum. On the other hand, dramatically changing the
face of Japanese education has been much easier.

From the period of industrialisation through to the end of
the war, education in Japan was geared predominantly towards producing obedient
servants of the Emperor and, by extension, the military. All the older
generation remember reciting the Emperor’s Rescript on Education,
instructing the Emperor’s
subjects to “offer
[themselves] courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the
prosperity of Our Imperial Throne”. They also learned grammar through
rote citations of saita saita sakura ga saita, susume
susume heitai susume (“the cherry blossoms bloom, onward the solders advance”).

Japanese post-war education was framed with the explicit
goal of building democratic values and preventing the nationalistic education
of the past. Unsurprisingly the LDP is unhappy with this, arguing that schools
have promoted a “self-flogging” view of the country’s culture and modern history.
Successive conservative governments have made attempts to exert more political
control over the powerful local education councils (who decide, inter alia, which of
the approved textbooks to use in the district) and to break the staunchly
leftist national teachers' union.

In 1999 the parliament passed a law requiring all state
schools to display the flag at commencement ceremonies, and all teachers
(though not necessarily students) to stand and sing the anthem – both extremely controversial in the
Japanese context because of their close connection with militarism. State
school teachers are regularly disciplined because of their refusal to stand
during the anthem and even for allegedly only mouthing the lyrics, as thought
police of the school administration have been instructed to stand by teachers
and listen with ears pricked, to ascertain whether they are truly singing.

Numerous court cases arguing the unconstitutionality of
these punishments (and of the law itself) have gone nowhere, with the Supreme
Court stating that standing for and singing the anthem was merely “customary and ceremonial”. In one case, seven secondary school teachers in Tokyo who
refused to stand were each docked a month’s
pay for this expression of their conscience. In September 2013, the Supreme
Court invalidated this punishment, judging it disproportionate, after which the
municipality cynically issued formal warnings to the group to ensure their
employment records were marred. And if the government has its way
with constitutional reform, the people would be legally required to “respect the national flag and the
anthem” –justifying
further demands for shows of loyalty.

In 2005, amendments were made to the Basic Act on Education adding “respect for tradition and culture” and “love of our country and of the homeland” as one of the objectives of
education. In an ominous move seemingly aimed at reintroducing conscription,
the LDP’s
revised constitution also dictates that the people must “proactively defend the nation and the
homeland with pride and spirit”.
Very similar language also features in the new national security strategy adopted in December
2013; the strategy states “it
is vital that each citizen understands that national security is not a distant
issue … the
government will take measures to foster love of our country and of the homeland”. Clearly, education reforms are
being undertaken with these national security objectives in mind.

Sure enough, in November 2013, the education minister
announced a plan for new guidelines requiring textbooks to be sufficiently “patriotic” for approval. An indication as to the
metric of patriotism, the guidelines also state that textbooks should reflect
the government position on particular issues, an obviously worrying step given
the many efforts of successive governments in whitewashing wartime atrocities
in school textbooks.

Equally sinister is the promotion of the ethics course
within the curriculum. Currently all Japanese schoolchildren have a course on
ethics throughout their mandatory schooling, but this is somewhat ill defined,
with much left up to individual teachers. In late December 2013, a government
appointed panel recommended that ethics be promoted to a formal subject within
the curriculum. Though the panel stated that ethics
should continue to be an unmarked course (ie students would not be marked),
this change means that there will be a national outline of its content and a
textbook. With the new requirements for promotion of patriotism through
textbooks, there are serious concerns that the new ethics course will become nationalist indoctrination.

The Tokyo of 2020

These debates are longstanding and predate Abe’s premiership. The many elements at
play include the stagnation of Japan’s
economy since the burst of the “bubble” in 1991, neoliberal reforms pushed
forward since the 1990s, the consequential explosion in numbers of un- and
under-employed youth (many of whom have proven susceptible to populist
propaganda of all sorts) and the perceived threat from a politically and
economically rising China.

It would be foolish to say that the current trends are all
Abe’s
fault. Nevertheless, it is also true that Abe is personally committed to these
right-wing reforms in a way that few other prime ministers have been, and that
he has managed to present them as a cure for the country’s ills. History shows that a public
constantly under threat of losing their pay cheque and their status in the
social hierarchy, as is currently the case with the majority of Japanese,
provides fertile ground for fascism.

One – perhaps
the only one – of
Abe’s
diplomatic victories has been the selection of Tokyo as the site for the summer
Olympics in 2020 (a feat achieved only with Abe’s disingenuous assurances to the selection committee that
the ongoing nuclear disaster in Fukushima was “under control”).
The government is doing its best to draw parallels with the first time Tokyo
held the Olympic games in 1964, when a confident nation boasted its
technological achievements and went on to become one of the global economic
powerhouses. In fact, the Olympics had also been scheduled for Tokyo in 1940,
but were cancelled among growing international opprobrium against Japanese
militarism and its war in China. If Abe has his way, the Tokyo of 2020 may very
well resemble that of 1940, rather than 1964. In many aspects, it already does.

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